This is the prelude to
the “RotWorld” storyline that ran through several titles, and it’s still damn
creepy. Second-string superhero Buddy “Animal Man” Baker learns that his 4yo
daughter Maxine is a powerful elemental, an “Avatar for the Red”. But the
Avatar for the Rot – who’s revealed in the final panel of #11 as old Swamp
Thing foe Arcane – wants to get his hands on Maxine. On the run from an army of
rotting zombie animals, Buddy and his family go searching for the Avatar of the
Green, Swamp Thing, so they can fight Arcane and restore balance to the world.
Many hardships and personal tragedies ensue, not least of which is Buddy
Baker’s death (don’t worry, he gets better).

The art teams change
regularly but maintain a remarkable uniform style, but it’s Lemire’s terrific
writing – building layers of dread and suspense – that make Animal Man far and
away the best series in the New 52 line. Bring on the crossovers and
mini-“event”.

Basically, a piss-poor
preview of the highly overrated and frustrating Future’s End maxiseries that
ran a year later. A nightmare future, loads of weird groupings of superheroes
with former villains, and former heroes with supervillains. A nonsensical
Batman invention that saves the day (seemingly pulled from the writers’ collective
arsehole), then the inevitable “we’ll send you back in time so you can stop
this horrible future from ever happening” – and they do. The only thing that
salvages this crossover is the downbeat, surprisingly human ending,
particularly in Animal Man. Buddy Baker goes through hell to save his family
and the planet, but still ultimately fails to save his son from death. If only
the rest of “Rotworld” could have been that powerful.

The Shade was one of the
most intriguing characters from Robinson’s run on Starman in the 1990s, so I
was happy to buy this 12-issue maxiseries. It starts strongly with Shade
surviving an assassination attempt by Deathstroke and setting out to find the
man who hired him, which turns out to be one of his descendants. From there, we
get a potted history of The Shade with individual stories and arcs that vary in
quality. Artistically, the three-issue run by Irving looks fantastic. But the
storyline lost my interest near the end and the conclusion (a brief origin
story) felt oddly rushed...as if Robinson intended this series to be more than
12 issues, but got told to wrap it up early (due to poor sales, I presume). The
final issue even has a heading that states its the first chapter in a longer
arc, yet it’s all over 20 pages later. Odd.